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Jazz cello
Doing a gig with Pete Churchill and some mates from my band in the Royal Albert Hall on Monday – haven’t played jazz cello in a while so really looking forward to it. No improvisation but I’ve heard...
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kids are pretty cool
If you want a shining example of how to get kids to enjoy making music, look no further than Pete Churchill and the Merton Music Foundation. Last night I played in the Music is for Life concert at the...
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Rhythms of the City playing the London Marathon
After some hardcore training, am looking forward to watching the marathon tomorrow from the sidelines… not quite from the comfort of a sofa though as I’ll be playing with my band along the route just...
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harmonicas, and a reharmonisation of “Foreign Lander” by Tim O’Brien
How do three music addicts survive when attempting to travel for 25 days without a musical instrument? Answer: they cheat. I caved in on day 3 and bought a harmonica in Kuala Lumpur: Despite being sold...
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Audio looping with Free Software
I’m currently on a musical pilgrimage around the USA. I brought my Digitech JamMan Delay unit with me, because I was attending Christian Howes‘ phenomenal Creative Strings Workshop in Columbus, Ohio,...
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Flying with a (carbon fibre) cello
When flying, most cellists are faced with either buying an extra ticket or getting a flight case, paying oversized baggage fees, and praying. Experiences vary widely and are in places well documented...
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Rediscovering music
I’m sitting on a plane from LA to Chicago. This is my fifth flight in the last two months, having already been to New York, Ohio, Florida, and California, and it’s probably about time I explain what...
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cello lessons from a dead genius
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time … In the summer of 2011, I quit my job to resume full-time music studies. During the summer semester at the Berkeley Jazzschool in California, I started...
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music industry learns nothing from the Avid / Sibelius saga?
UPDATE 26/02/2013: Daniel has replied to this post, and I have replied to his reply. As George Santayana famously said, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. In light of...
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London Tango Orchestra featured in BBC Persia documentary
These days I have the regular pleasure of playing in the London Tango Orchestra with some wonderful musicians. A while back we did some filming for a BBC Persia documentary, and we recently received...
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announcing the Scale Matcher!
I’ve been a bit of a hermit the last few weeks, burning the candle both ends and spending the majority of my spare time building a new toy … well actually it started out as a toy, but now I think it’s...
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new music video: acoustic version of Jóga by Björk, with Emma Smith
I’m a long-time fan of Björk, and was recently lucky enough to snarf a spare ticket to a show here in London at the end of her Biophilia tour. It was a fairly insane show (in a good way), involving an...
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Rethinking traditional scale practice on the cello
(Please note that while this post was written with the cello in mind, several of the principles apply to other instruments too.) I’ve previously blogged about how back in 2011, I decided to get...
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